Blue Ribbon Champ Read Free Page B

mothers turned their backs, touched every toy they could reach.
    As usual, the market had drawn Amish folk from nearby farms. Bearded men in straw hats, white shirts, and black pants exchanged the latest news in Pennsylvania Dutch dialect. Their women—dressed in white caps, granny glasses, royal blue dresses, black aprons, and work boots—chatted in circles. Their children, carbon copies of the parents, stood close to the adults and eyed the tables with wonder. Keister’s market was definitely the place to be!
    Mr. Chambers drove the van onto a large field and found a place in one of the long rows of parked vehicles. Skye glanced back at the marketplace and spotted a table crowded with horse models of all shapes and sizes. She popped up in her seat as if she’d sat on a tack.
    “Horses!” she said as she pressed her nose flat against the window. “Morgan, look. There’s a table loaded with horses. That’s where I’m heading.”
    “Good,” Morgan replied. “I’m heading in the same direction.”
    In less than five minutes, Mr. Chambers had the van unloaded and had everyone ready to go, including Morgan in her Jazzy.
    Skye did a quick mental review of her horse collection. Again, her heart raced with the prospect of findinganother horse, one completely different from all the others. “Mom,” she said, slipping her fingers through her hair, “can Morgan and I go by ourselves?”
    Joey rushed to Skye’s side and grabbed her hand. “Cloud, my girlfriend, kin I go with you? Nobody’ll hurtcha today. See, I’m the sheriff.” Under his ten-gallon hat, full red cheeks blew on the star on his chest. Joey then radiated an effortless smile.
    “I don’t think so,” Skye said, quickly pulling her hand free. “Why don’t you—”
    “Joey,” Mr. Chambers said as he reached his arm around the boy’s shoulders, “Mrs. C. and I want to show you and the other guys something really neat inside the barn. Do you like rabbits?”
    “Wabbits? Ooh, yeah. They’re really fuzzy and cute. I love wabbits.”
    Mr. Chambers turned Joey toward the other students. “Well, then let’s go. We have a lot to see today.”
    Walking away with the group, Mrs. Chambers looked back at Skye and Morgan. “Girls, be back here at one o’clock.”
    “Okay, Mom!” Skye yelled.
    “One o’clock!” Morgan added as the two headed in the opposite direction.
    Melding into the crowd, the girls flowed with the river of passersby. Skye’s eyes darted wildly as she tried to look in every direction at once. The humid air, filled with the chatter of making a good deal, already clung to the girls like a sticky cloth. The hint of grilling hot dogs and french fries also hung in the haze, with faint wafts of horse manure infiltrating the food smells throughout the entire grounds.
    A half hour and a soda later brought the girls to a table piled high with old records in their jackets, VHS tapes, and used computer games.
    “This is the table I saw on the way in.” Morgan’s freckles danced with a radiant smile. “Look at all these games.”
    But Skye had something else on her mind. Glancing across the road, she spotted her target on the right. “Hey, over there are the horses, about six tables on the other side.”
    “You go ahead…” Morgan never looked up from a game box she was studying. “I’ll catch up with you in a while.”
    Skye glanced at her watch, smiled, and took off toward the table. Two more hours!
    At the horse table, children as well as adults had lined up like cows at a water trough. Skye excused herself and squeezed right up front. The vendor, sitting in a lawn chair in the shade of his truck, let out a lazy yawn and scratched his curly white hair. Hmm, Skye thought, he must know horses are in. I guess he doesn’t need to “sell.”
    Skye studied the display, her heart pounding like a hammer in her chest. On her left, she saw a shoebox filled with dozens of tiny plastic horses in an array of equine colors. Next to the